Dahlum, Sirianne and Carl Henrik Knutsen (forthcoming) . Title TBD (follow-up to response to "Democracy by demand? Reinvestigating the effect of self-expression values on political regime type"). British Journal of Political Science.

Dahlum, Sirianne and Carl Henrik Knutsen (forthcoming) . Democracy by demand? Reinvestigating the effect of self-expression values on political regime type. British Journal of Political Science.

Knutsen, Carl Henrik (forthcoming) Reinvestigating the Reciprocal Relationship between Democracy and Income Inequality. Review of Economics and Institutions.

Knutsen, Carl Henrik and Håvard M. Nygård (2015) Institutional characteristics and regime survival: Why are semi-democracies less durable than autocracies and democracies? American Journal of Political Science 59(3): 656-670

Knutsen, Carl Henrik and Tore Wig (2015). Government Turnover and the Effects of Regime Type: How Requiring Alternation in Power Biases against the Estimated Economic Benefits of Democracy. Comparative Political Studies 48(7): 882-914.

In this article, we argue that autocratic regimes are no less likely than democracies to adopt old-age pensions, although autocratic programs are less universal in their coverage. Our theoretical argument focuses on the strong incentives that autocratic regimes have for enacting and maintaining such programs to ensure regime survival. Autocratic pension programs can be considered club goods that (a) are targeted to critical supporting groups and (b) solve credible commitment problems on promises of future distribution, thereby mitigating probability of regime breakdown. We test three implications from the argument, drawing on a novel dataset on welfare state programs and including 140 countries with time series from the 1880s. First, we find that autocracies are no less likely than democracies to have old-age pension programs. But, second, autocracies have less universal pension programs than democracies. Third, pension programs effectively reduce the probability of autocratic breakdown.

This article investigates whether and how changes in issue focus in election campaigns affect voting intention, even if no preference change takes place, and whether such effects vary systematically across different groups of voters. Evidence is reported from two survey experi- ments of Norwegian voters, where respondents were treated with information drawing their attention towards issues pertaining either to immigration or the environment. Although irrel- evant for policy learning or persuasion, this information strongly increased the support of particular parties. More specifically, parties with ‘ownership’ of the issues involved gained votes. Certain types of voters were more likely to change voting intentions post-treatment than others, but which types crucially depended on the issue area under focus. Nevertheless, the results indicate that the issue focus of campaigns is very important for vote choice. Hence, one should expect that, for instance, even ‘neutral’ political news coverage at or close to election day could affect voters in predictable ways. Furthermore, one should expect different parties to fight hard to steer the focus of campaigns towards issues where they have ownership.

We propose that the extent to which political parties are institutionalized shapes welfare state development. Institutionalized parties allow politicians to overcome coordination problems, avoid capture by special interests, and form stable linkages with broad social groups. These features enable and incentivize politicians to pursue generous and universal welfare policies. Employing recent measures of party institutionalization and welfare law features, we test implications from our argument on data covering from 169 countries and extending back to 1900. Even when accounting for country- and year-fixed effects and institutional features such as electoral system, regime type and state capacity, we find very robust evidence that party institutionalization leads to more extensive, universal, and generous welfare arrangements. The relationship is more pronounced in democracies, but exists also in autocracies. When disaggregating party institutionalization and evaluating mechanisms, the linkages that institutionalized parties form with social groups constitute one important, but not the only relevant, factor.

There is no consensus in the literature regarding whether democracy enhances or decreases economic growth, and there are unsettled questions also on other potential economic effects. This dissertation contributes to the literature by introducing novel theoretical models, through developing methodological solutions to important problems like the endogeneity of democracy, and through extensive empirical analyses. The dissertation contains a discussion of the democracy concept's structure and the measurement of democracy. After an extensive literature review and methodological discussion, the thesis presents theoretical and empirical analyses on the effects of democracy on physical capital, human capital, and technological change: Whereas democracy likely reduces savings rates, there is less robust evidence for a negative effect on investment. Democracy may increase human capital accumulation, but this does seemingly not lead to higher human capital-induced economic growth for democracies. However, democracy enhances technological change, which may partly be explained by dictators' incentives to obstruct idea flows for political survival reasons. Thereafter, the dissertation presents evidence indicating that democracy increases economic growth. Although the results are not completely robust, there seems to be a positive effect even when taking into account possible country-specific effects and the endogeneity of democracy to economic growth. The data material utilized is the most extensive in the literature, encompassing more than 150 countries with some time series going back to the 19th century. There is, however, large variation in the economic performances of dictatorships. A theoretical model is developed, indicating that whereas internal security threats tend to induce the selection of "bad" economic policies, external threats often induce "good" policies. The dissertation presents a game theoretic analysis and case-study evidence indicating that the different security environments facing African and Asian dictators may explain the diverging performances of dictatorial countries on these continents. The thesis also contains an empirical analysis indicating that democracy may not directly enhance citizens' life satisfaction, but may impact more indirectly in poor countries through its positive economic effects. Finally, a discussion on the normative desirability of democracy promotion is conducted, and policy implications are deduced.